Stop Identifying with Your Past: A Guided Meditation to Discover Your True Presence | Eckhart Tolle

(bell dings) – Allow the mind to subside, which means thinking right now is not important. Something else is important. Meditation begins when thinking is recognized as not all-important. And you begin to sense there's something in you that's deeper than thinking, and becoming aware of that dimension beyond thinking. That's meditation. Not below thinking, in which case you would go into sleep, but above thinking, so to speak. So right here and now, how do you become aware of that dimension? Simply by becoming aware of yourself. Not the historical self, the person, but a more fundamental sense of beingness or presence that is always there, but most people don't know it's there. And so, for them it is as if it didn't exist. So meditation is becoming aware of yourself as a sense of presence. And that sense of presence could also be called stillness. And could be called many other things. And realizing that dimension within yourself is the most important thing for you in this lifetime. It's a kind of foundation for all that is good in your life. And if you're not aware of that dimension that transcends the person, it means that, continuously, you derive your sense of who you are from the movement of your mind, which is thought, and nothing is going to give you lasting fulfillment if you haven't found that dimension. In other words, life becomes frustrating, frequently upsetting, consisting, seemingly, of a succession of problems and conflict situations, things going wrong. Continuously demanding your attention with an unspoken promise, which is an underlying assumption, unconscious, that at some point your life is going to work out, and will be fulfilling, will become free of your problems. Perhaps a better relationship, better place to live, a better work situation, improved health situation. And then, when you come into the new situation, it seems at first, yeah, this is better. And then the old patterns reemerge in the new situation. In other words, it's no longer fulfilling. So nothing in this world can be fulfilling for long if you haven't transcended the person and the historical sense of self. To be. This is the being dimension. To become aware of the simple fact that you are. "I am." When you make that statement, you say, "I am," and you can sense the meaning behind the words. You can sense the meaning, but you cannot understand it. I'm using the word "understand" as conceptual knowledge, conceptual realization. You cannot understand, conceptually, what "I am" means, or points to. You have to give up wanting to understand, which means you have to give up thinking. And although "I am" is still a thought, a word, but behind the word is the thought, it takes you to the edge. What it points to is beyond thinking. What it points to is that you can become aware of being conscious right now. So you're becoming aware of yourself as a space of consciousness, and that's who you are. That's the very foundation for your sense of identity. I am. (metal creaking) (metal creaking) (metal creaking) (footsteps creaking) So when you become aware of that, there's no duality. The duality is there when I speak about it, because of the way a sentence is constructed, subject and object. So I am aware of consciousness, I am aware of awareness. Sounds like duality. It sounds as if there's the "I" that is conscious of consciousness. But the "I" and "consciousness" are synonymous. They are one and the same. So you cannot be aware of awareness, ultimately, although when we speak about it, it sounds like it. What it really means is you become self-aware. Consciousness, which is you, becomes self-aware. That's meditation. If you need a technique to get you there, use it. Don't get attached to it. Ultimately, it's not the technique, and it's not a doing. If you're thinking, "I'm doing a meditation," you can't do meditation. And even to say, "I meditate," is misleading. It can become an obstacle, the idea that I am meditating, or I have to meditate, because it implies that you are doing something. Doing takes time. Meditation is the realization of the timeless dimension of consciousness. So it can't be a doing. It's only when doing is relinquished, you become a way of being, (metal creaking) like now. (metal creaking) So there is the timeless dimension, which is inseparable from who you are, and your essence, which are the same. There's also the timeless dimension of the universe. So the ability to be still, or to realize the stillness that's already there within yourself, and not believing that you need to still your mind, which becomes almost a battle, becomes a doing, but to realize, even if your mind is in turmoil, underneath it, there's a stillness like the deep waters, the depths of the ocean. And you realize that just by becoming aware of yourself, not the historical self, but the "I." Presence.